This is the perfect example of the moral bankruptcy of both the human rights industry and Cameronism.

It should hardly need to be stated - except it passed most libertarians by - that if the Philosopher Kings on the bench can create absurd new rights at a stroke, they can just as easily sweep aside real ones. This is how we ended up with a country infested with lawyers, but where the police can still demand this:

It informed the car’s owner that her Volvo estate had been sighted by officers and added that officers needed to speak to her as soon as possible to ‘confirm that you have not committed any offences.’

...At which point the ghost of Matthew Hopkins has just slapped himself atop the head shouting 'why didn't I think of that'?

And then there's The Dave....

Hey, we were told that Culture War was passé, so ten minutes ago, squaresville. The Dave would ascend the throne and the lion would lie down the lamb, and with one bound Jack would be free.

Oops.

The Dave is in Number Ten, but staggeringly enough, it turns out the loonies have not in fact folded their tents and retired to Tuscany. Nope, leftist fanatics are still using public services to impose their own crazy agenda, after all. Guess we do need to fight the culture war after all.

So now you need a "legitimate" reason to drive down a public highway. "Legitimacy" will be defined by some leftist weirdo, after months of accusation and innuendo, based on your gender and race, with zero accountability.

But never mind, we still get to vote every four years or so.

Anyway, I guess Liberty are all over this so we don't have to worry about it.

@FT: On the other hand, what chances would the smoking ban had of succeding in the 50s?

I can't really argue Julia's case for her as I can only guess what it is, but I do find it odd that at a time where the justice system as a whole is getting less popular support, that there seem to be more people about who are prepared to defend increasingly illiberal and bureaucratic laws. Maybe they're not supporting the police per se, but just want Something To Be Done about their own personal hobbyhorses. (smoking, speeding, 'hate' crimes, whatever)

FT, yes, the law regarding flashing headlights is indeed an old one. But how many prosecutions have ever been brought under it? I suspect the answer is vanishingly small. In part because the police needed the support of the public and recognised that this would get the public's back up for no good reason.

So, what's changed? Simply that target culture now drives EVERYTHING and anything which hinders the efficient performance of the police in collecting the statistics and revenue is now pursued with vigour.

"Superintendent Angela Williams, of West Yorkshire Police, said: ‘The tactic to target the men who solicit women has been used for a number of years ... and with notable success."

Of course it's successful, you moron. Instituting a nationwide 7pm curfew would be successful, too, or jailing all men between the ages of fourteen and thirty, if success is merely cutting crime. It never seems to occur to the police that some of our laws exist for other reasons, and they absolutely can't comprehend the idea that rather a lot of law is there to limit their power and thereby protect us from them.

This is probably the most intelligent set of comments House of Dumb's ever been graced with...ironically it's for a post in which DJ, in his usual non-sequitur fashion, associates libertarianism with support for tyranny again.

" It never seems to occur to the police that some of our laws exist for other reasons, and they absolutely can't comprehend the idea that rather a lot of law is there to limit their power and thereby protect us from them."

Well, when they have politicians like Kerry McCarthy of Bristol suggesting all men in the Bristol area should be subject to DNA swabs to catch the killer of Joanna Yeates, it's not hard to see why they don't, isnt it?